Tag Archives: what the hell?

I used to make a real point to write on the old blog a few times a month. Then once a month. Maybe. Give it a shot.

Not it’s like, twice a year.

It’s not like I gave up writing. Frankly, it’s all I ever do. If I’m not writing an actual story for an actual newspaper, I’m writing notes and lists and texts and emails and thoughts and ideas and facepage posts. I’m telling the kids when I’ll be home and telling old Jimmer what’s for dinner and telling myself not to freaking forget to take in the taxes yet there they sit… on the counter… I still have 15 days, don’t judge me.

I’m busy.

Not crazy busy.

But busy.

Enough that it took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out how to make a new post because all my neat-o wordpress options have changed.

So it’s no surprise that the passage of time has prompted me to have a good hard think about the passage of time.

“Are you going to be sad when I go to high school next year?”

Actual words from my actual child’s mouth. He’s going to be a freshman in the fall.

Bring on the woe is me, the “oh noes my baby boy,” the fear upon the realization that he’ll be legally behind the wheel in just over two years.

But then I saw some mommy blog crap, and my fears of “cannot believe my baby is growing up” came to a screeching halt.

Now, just a disclaimer. I really dislike mommy blogs. Like. A lot.

Probably the biggest reason that mommy blogs grind my gears is that they always appear to be written by women between the ages of 25 and 35 with only toddlers underfoot. They want to share their sage wisdom or hilarious stories of failures now that they are experienced moms with all the answers.

Even though they don’t yet know the horror of the 45 minute shower. Or wondering where all the hand towels went. Sippy cup problems are pretty ridiculous when your teenaged son morphs into a Disney princess sprawled across the bed shrieking “YOU DON’T KNOW!”

And I haven’t even hit real dating and high school dramz yet.

I often see mommy bloggers as embellishing storytellers with tales so ridiculous and way too long that sound like they come from jackasses who changed their email addresses to DylanandXandersMommy@Ihavenoidentity.com

Scary Mommy is the worst. If you Google “Scary Mommy Truth” you get 420,000 results, with hits including “the truth about divorce,” “the truth about having a third child,” “the truth about snow days” and my very favorite, “the universal truth of motherhood.” Spoiler alert – according to that post, the universal truth of being a mom is that we never again get to use the bathroom alone. Which is a hella lot of bullshit, get some god damn control over your home and your children and piss like a civilized human with the door closed, it literally takes a few seconds. My lord.

There’s also a “confessional” which rivals the Penthouse forum. It’s really weird.

So Scary Mommy and her sister blog sites share those DOWN TO EARTH truths about motherhood that I don’t identify with at all. But at the same time, these things have something like a bijillion readers so obviously people like it and whatever, it’s just me. Others relate so that’s cool.

But yesterday I spotted this one – NOT Scary Mommy – and it irked me off more than usual:

Featured on the “Message with a Bottle” blog, I have to admit, I didn’t get too far into this one. Because the very first lie that this 30-something mom refuses to tell herself is this:

I will no longer pretend that I’m young

Age really is relative, isn’t it? No matter how many 80-year-olds point a finger at me and proclaim, “YOUTH,” there need only be one 20-something to remind me that I’m pretty much ancient. Go hang out with someone fresh out of college if you doubt me. They’ll be like, “Let’s do shots!” and you’ll be all, “Ugh, just a half a glass of wine, please, that’s all I can handle tonight.”

I throw the bullshit flag on that so hard that I throw out my shoulder and dent the ground with the thing.

First.

Moms.

ENOUGH WITH THE WINE. What is this nonsense where moms are like “oooohhhhh lookey at MEEEEE I love wine!!” We get it, your kids drive you to drink. Newsflash, this started about 16 generations ago. Get with the times.

But second, and far more important, is this crap:

“I’m pretty much ancient.”

I get it. Hyperbole. Hilarious!!!

Now stop it.

For one thing, I didn’t go around in my 20s taking shots every night of the week, and I happen to know a lot of 20-somethings, and they don’t either. I had a job. Then later, I had a KID. Those shot-takers who you cannot keep up with? They aren’t 20-somehtings, they are drunks. No one likes a drunk, not even a recent college grad.

But more importantly, it actually puts true sadness in my (apparently ancient since I’m not even a 30-something mom, I’m a fragile 42-year-old) heart to hear young people lament the loss of their youth, even in jest.

If your age is 30-something… you’re not old

Also not old — 40-somethings and 50-somethings. If you’re 60-somethings, you’re on the threshold. Maybe.

Why do people do this to themselves, this “I’m so old” nonsense. Of all the ways I love to poke at myself, age is not one of them. If you’re already doing the “oh my *deep sigh* I’m soooooo old” and you’re just in your 30s, how the hell do you expect to chase around your teenager. Because trust me — you NEED to chase them around.

You’re too old in your 30s? Aw, honey, middle school moms are going to EAT YOU ALIVE.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the passage of time, realizing that my little ones are not so little anymore.

But I’m reminded daily that while I’m 20 years out of college, I’m young as all get out. I don’t need to be 20-something to be young. I just need to be alive to be young.

My kid is going to high school next year. I look forward to him trying to keep up with his young mom.

Do you remember that episode of Friends (of course you do) when Joey was writing a letter of recommendation to the adoption agency for Monica and Chandler, and Ross showed him how to use the thesaurus (so he’d sound smarter)?

I felt like that was what was happening as I was reading the now-famous “Conscious Uncoupling” break-up “announcement” from Brad Pitt’s ex-girlfriend with the idiotic lifestyle blog who was in that one movie I liked. You know. The one where Kevin Spacey cut her head off?

WHAT’S IN THE BOX???

It’s your dignity, Gwyn.

The more I attempted to read her ridiculous letter, the more I thought, she DID use the thesaurus!! Because, I mean, see for yourself if you haven’t read it yet:

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate. We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.

Love,

Gwyneth & Chris

Then they used a happy photo of themselves, to show that they are still UNITED (I assume). I don’t want to use it without permission, so….

~visual approximation~

Pretty close.

Anyway.

Conscious uncoupling? I’m sorry, but isn’t that what happens when, you know, the sex is over?

I decided to try it Joey’s way. And you know what? I think I out-Gwyneth Paltrow’d Gwyneth Paltrow. I present…..

Cognizant Rupture

It is with blood pumping organs in animate beings full of despondency that we have decided to cleave. We have been laboring dense for well over an orbital period of the Earth moving around the sun, some of it en masses, some of it partitioned, to see what might have been duck soup between us, and our own selves have come to the culmination that while we adulate each other copious amounts we will remain sovereign. We are, per contra, and always will be a genealogy network, and in multitudinous ways we are proximate than we have ever been. We are fountainheads early and A-1, to two incredibly staggering progeny and we ask for their and our unlimited three-dimensional realm and concealment to be venerated at this enigmatical epoch. We have always regulated our liaison clandestinely, and we hope that as we cognizantly rupture and cofountainhead, we will be able to loiter in the same idiosyncrasy.

Every 20-something has the same thing happen to them. A moment in time (and that moment may last an extended period) when they are just. so. stupid. And in this moment of idiocy, they mutter things like “I’ll never…” They’re having some sort of lame quasi-protest of things they’ll never do. They don’t actually have a reason for finding it unacceptable, yet they lack the skills to just say, “meh, I don’t like that.”

So rather than just not comment on something they dislike, or comment that it’s not their thing, they proclaim!! that they will NEVER….

Case in point:

Oh my god I will NEVER drive a minivan!!

That was pretty much the mantra of my generation. Lord help you if you did anything as horrifying as get behind the wheel of one of these. For god’s sake, why not just un-pop your collar or wear *gasp* bootcut jeans.

Well, sooner or later, you realize, as horrifying as it is, you are that age — you gotta have the minivan. And even if you never ACTUALLY drive one, you’re more like, meh. I’m sure there are things far worse, far more embarrassing. OTHER things that I would NEVER do.

Well, ladies, you’re doing it.

And it’s this:

OH MY GOD Y’ALL!

It’s *WINE* time!!!

There’s this whole Pinterest “movement” I’ll call it, and it’s all about the love of WINE! They have JOKES!

Get it? Ha ha!! You know that you can BUY that? Someone will print that out for you and send it to you. But you have to pay for it. And that person is probably a genius, because she knows that people are so drunk on wine that they’ll buy ANYTHING.

It’s the thing that the cool kids are looking at and thinking, oh my god, HOW DO I AVOID THAT?

I. Will. Never…

Not all of them. Sure, some of them are perfectly capable of appreciating a decent glass of wine. Just like some folks were perfectly capable of not giving a damn what they were driving, as long as it went.

But for the most part, dudes. You’re like, MAKING SOME SERIOUS LOVE to your wine. It’s pornographic. You’re all “ooooohhhhhhhh wine” because you don’t seem to know that it’s a drink. It can’t hear you. It’s old fruit, fruit that got so old, it went all stinky, and then someone was like “ah cool I’ll squeeze it into a bottle, some fool will drink it” and YOU ARE THE FOOL.

There was a time when you were like “how can I avoid being the weirdo that my mother is” and now you ARE. Maybe her vice wasn’t wine. Maybe it was Gloria Vanderbilt jeans or Dr. Scholl’s flip flops or Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Soda. But it was weird and changed her and you SWORE but LOOK. Look at you dude. LOOK.

And all the regular wine drinkers are like, ah man, suburban moms are KILLING MY WINE!

I mean, for the love.

Not only are you drinking what I can only assume are pound and pounds of old grapes in a single sitting, then you justify it by PLAYING WITH THE GARBAGE:

It’s not just that these are do-it-yourself wine garbage crafts, but there are TEN of them.

Including stuff like this:

Forever is today?

What?

That doesn’t even make SENSE. And how many CORKS is that? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, holy shit I cannot possibly keep counting because NOW I’M SAD.

And those 10 DIY Wine Garbage Projects are one of the SMALLER suggestions on these here internets for what to do with your used corks.

I mean:

That’s FURNITURE.

Furniture made with WINE CORKS. And it is one of THIRTY suggestions on this particular drunkenenabling crafting page.

Not to worry, though. You can make furniture out of your beer bottles too.

But it’s not really presented in quite the crafty quaint fun loving Pinteresty way. If you’re a beer drinker, the suggestions are more along the lines of:

Yes. Because nothing says “I drink too much” like shards of glass in your bum as you sit on the dock by the bay. You make a cork buffet, and you are AMAZING. But you make one of these bad boys, and your parents and siblings are suddenly holding an intervention. Maybe if you stenciled “Forever is Today” across the side it would be classier.

Seriously.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS EVEN?

Wine is stupid. And it tastes bad. I want the wine movement to go AWAY and to take its Pinterest pages with it. And to stop giving women a bad name. We don’t all love you, wine! We don’t!!!

“You walk outside, you risk your life. You take a drink of water, you risk your life. Nowadays you breathe and you risk your life. You don’t have a choice. The only thing you can choose is what you’re risking it for.”

Yeah, deliver a speech like that, you’re probably going to get your head cut off sooner or later.

OH MY GOD Y’ALL I have such a problem. The Walking Dead is coming back on Sunday, and I am LEGIT pissed that it’s taking so long. I need my Darryl. I need my Rick. For God’s sake, I miss Beth’s singing. I’m quoting Herschel. Then wanting to cry. BECAUSE HE IS DEAD.

(hey, did ANYONE go stab his head, or is he headless Herschel laying on the ground all “gaarrrhhhhhh” outside the prison?)

I’m not alone, yo. It’s like I KNOW them. And I am so sad that they’re not here right now. I need them. I have serious issues. Do you?

Top 9 Signs You Have Serious Issues With The Walking Dead

#9 ~ You have weapons.

Sure, it’s the winter that won’t end. Even the people *IN* the *ACTUAL* Atlanta have had to go out and buy a shovel. But you’re not content to buy a new shovel. You bought a set. With a flat-edge ice pick. For one reason and one reason only.

You are smashing some walker skull with this.

#8 ~ You won’t go thirsty.

That water cooler looks like the one your Grandma had. And all those fools with their “save their environment” Tervis cups are going to be BEGGING you for a drink because you have a house full of water jugs and not tiny little rainforest friendly recyclable bottles.

You know what the rainforest has?

WALKERS.

#7 ~ You’re unapologetically hoarding.

You’re avoiding taking boxes to good will, because you’re going to need some towels and extra clothes when the washing machines disappear into the abyss.

#6 ~ You have made an actual list of the clothing items you will bring with you to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Nope.

Nope.

There you go. Also, you’ll be stealing all your husband’s clothing. Don’t worry. He isn’t going to make it. You’ll have to put him down with this:

Yes, this again. Told you it would come in handy. Sorry Jim.

#5 ~ There are not enough notebooks in the world.

Because you need to literally rewrite history, and there’s all these notebooks on sale at Walmart. And make bizzaro check marks a la The Governor trying to fix the walkers. You’ll collect pencils and pencil sharpeners too, don’t worry, you’ve thought of it all.

#4 ~ You’ve taken to collecting razors.

You found the $4 razor store on Amazon. And you’re planning on looking like Maggie after the End of Days, so you’re gonna need to shave.

#3 ~ You have palates of this.

And you don’t want to admit it, but you think you’ve figured out a legitimate way to make it all work. It won’t even be gross.

#2 ~ This pisses you off.

When people tell you they want Darryl and Carol to have a romantic relationship, you think about stabbing them with your pencil. The one you are using to rewrite history. The history where Darryl loves you. Because your husband is dead. Remember, you smashed his skull with this:

He deserved it.

And you’ll drive it into Carol’s head too if she touches your man.

And the #1 sign you have serious issues with The Walking Dead ~ When someone utters the words “well in the comic book……..”

BOOM. Right in the face with this:

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up about the comic book.

If I wanted to read a comic book, I’d go steal my brother’s X-Men collection. Of course it’s different. In the comic (or, shall we call it a “graphic novel” so as not to hurt the feelings of the people who need pictures but don’t want to admit it) Shane dies early and Herschel has like 1,000 kids and Andrea and Dale are GETTING IT ON. And Carol is kind of straight then gay then tri-curious (wants to take a try at walkers, it does NOT end well) and The Governor looks like Captain Jack Sparrow and Maggie and Glen shave their heads and I didn’t have the patience to find out why.

AND THERE IS NO DARRYL DIXON.

The comic book sucks. Stop telling me they aren’t the same, unless you throw the words THANK GOD after that.

Look, I can even dress the part if I need to fit in, THAT is how ready I am.

So, it’s been a mere three and a half months since I started my new job.

To be perfectly accurate, it was 105 days.

I got this new job, remember, because I am a human bucket of awesome. Remember? I started working as a writer and “social media manager” for a company that makes dresses. Cool huh? Someone was actually going to pay me MONEY to post on Facebook and write descriptions of clothes.

Cool.

Yep. Well, 105 days later, and that bridge was burned in such a way that you’d think that raging inferno was caused by some old Irish woman’s cow. Burned that sucker to the ground, I did. Then salted the earth so nothing could grow again.

This is not a very easy post for me to write, because I want so badly to be snide and funny and quippy and silly. I want to joke about the trashy little office with perpetual stains on the floors and walls. I want to talk about the crazy attitudes and bemoaning and whining. I want to joke about the fact that so many people think feathers are a good embellishment, or the utterly terrible writing that I fixed on the website. I want to talk about the girl who mispronounced her own name (seriously, it was not a name with alternate pronunciations) or the girl who inexplicably seemed to form all of her sentences into questions.

We make clothes here?

Why are you asking me, you’ve been here for years, dumbass.

But I can’t really make too many jokes, really. And not just because I don’t want to trash my former employer and get sued all to hell, which I certainly do not.

Let me just tell the story.

The day that I interviewed, I had that cat-sees-a-ghost moment. You know what I am talking about, if you’ve ever had a cat (or a dog, probably). When you’re sitting there, minding your own business, watching old episodes of One Tree Hill on DVD reading the classics, when suddenly your cat is staring at the wall. He’s pissed, too. Whatever is there is dangerous, and scary. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. You should flee. But that’s ridiculous. You go back to Lucas and Nathan and that damn Dan Scott Miss Havisham and Pip and try to shake it off, but danger is there, somewhere. You know it.

This happened when the Beast rolled into the room to interview me. She poured into her seat as if her skin was stuffed with play-doh instead of bones and muscle. When she opened her mouth, she barked.

I wanted to scram out of there. But this job seemed great, and I thought I was resisting for the wrong reasons.

I was offered. I accepted. I started. I enjoyed.

I paddled forward and wrote and posted and learned. Some people made me cock my head to the side, others made me smile. I was new to an office, new to a 40-hour-week a job, I hadn’t held a 9-5 gig…. ever. All my full-time jobs in my whole adult life had always been off hours and always included weekends. This was new.

I was having a blast.

It lasted 65 days. Exactly 65 days in, and 40 days before I lost it, this ship turned, and it turned on a dime.

I feel pretty certain that describing it in full detail would be boring as complete and utter hell. It would also be impossible, as I am not really sure what all happened. But I know the date. And on that day, out of nowhere, the screaming started. And it never. stopped. On that day, the Beast opened her massive jowls and uttered a robust roar of anger, over an error so minor that at the time, her howl literally made me jump because I was not expecting it. To say it was disproportionate to the situation at hand isn’t just an understatement, it’s a false statement. It wasn’t disproportionate, it was absurd.

It was more absurd in light of the fact that I actually had not made any mistake, and in fact, the person who HAD made an error tried in vain to accept the blame. The Beast would have none of it. I swear, she glanced around the room to make sure all eyes were upon her before unleashing a bellow of insults at me, then walking away as swiftly as a woman that vast could possibly go.

I was left with my mouth hanging wide.

I was livid.

I tried the rest of the day to calm myself down. We were in the middle of a project, and everyone was getting yelled at sooner or later. Maybe it was just my turn.

The next day, the roar was ten times as loud at two other poor souls, and I thought, sweet relief, I’m out of the line of fire. That lasted roughly five hours.

Then I was wrong, and awful, and terrible. Y’all. I cried in front of my immediate supervisor. I told him I wasn’t going to make it through this nonsense. I told Jim I wasn’t going to make it through this nonsense.

But I did. For 40 more days.

And in those 40 days, what happened was hard to explain. The snide looks. The comments. The “what are you doing?” I got assigned to a project I wasn’t qualified to work on. I stayed late while others clocked out at 5 p.m. on the dot. I was dismissed. I was sneered at. I carried on, thinking, huh…

My intention was to just push through, get some experience, and move on. I mean, wasn’t that my intention from the start? To take the experience from this job and move it into a new career opportunity.

Then, the ghost that the cat saw finally made itself known.

Someone from another department had picked up one of my responsibilities, without my knowledge. They started posting to one of our social media sites. I know that when I started, I was excited about what seemed like this unreal opportunity to get paid to post on Facebook. But as it turned out, there was legitimate marketing strategy behind the postings. Nothing was done just to be done, like when you punch up a picture of the scone you’re about to devour and type in “YUM SCONES!!” When you implement a social media marketing strategy, everything from the post itself to the language to the time of day you post to how long your sentences are to your tags are part of a plan. Willy nilly is not allowed.

For whatever reason, someone else was posting. And they weren’t following any of the protocols.

I sent out an e-mail.

There was only one way that someone else was posting, and that was if they had obtained passwords from the Beast. And I certainly didn’t want to mess with that, so my e-mail was professional. Hey, here’s a heads up, here is our marketing plan. Here are some tips to make sure what you post is following the plan we’ve been implementing for the past few months.

Yeah, the cat jumped all over that ghost.

The Beast took the opportunity to let me know that I do a terrible job (not true) and I post terrible boring things (not true) that no one likes (not accurate at all) and so she told someone else to post. I pointed out that we’d actually made a fair amount of gains in the social media realm, gains that could be counted in the forms of likes and follows and average views. Her reply? “Matter of opinion.” Keep in mind that telling me that was borderline stupid, it was a matter of math. One plus one is two, that makes more people following you on social media. That’s not an opinion.

But…

She made a point to make that reply go to all. She made it a point to write all of this — this belittling nonsense about my terrible performance that was not at all terrible — in a reply all to everyone who had seen my original e-mail about how we are working to best utilize social media as a marketing tool. In short, I reached out to collaborate with co-workers. She reached out to tell me I’m a damn idiot.

Shake it off. Shake it off.

I shook it off for three more days.

Until I woke up on a Monday morning, and a woman with zero supervisory powers whatsoever over me had sent me a similar e-mail, on the same string that I had originally started. “If you can’t handle this job, we’ll do it for you,” she wrote. “You can’t even keep up, your work is mediocre at best.”

Until that moment, I had not even had a full conversation with this woman. She was not my superior. We weren’t in the same department. We didn’t even cross paths.

I lost it.

I almost broke the bathroom door down trying to get in to tell Jim I was quitting on the spot. Then I sat my ass down at the computer, and very nicely responded to the e-mail, by telling this young woman to kindly kiss my ass, and this job can suck a nutsack. I quit.

Reply all.

That’s an awful lot of story packed into a short space, and I realize it’s just mine. But you know what? It’s true. I have no idea what happened. I don’t know what happened from days 1 through 65, and then 66 to 105, that made it end this way.

And I have been sufficiently bummed all to hell ever since.

This morning, while I was whining a bit about it on the facepage, my friend Jill mentioned that workplace bullying is a real thing. And until she wrote that, I had never once considered that was what was happening to me.

So I looked into it.

Did you know female to female workplace bullying is more common than any other kind? And a sign that you’re being bullied is that you’re given an impossible task of doing a new job without training or time to learn new skills, but that work is never good enough for the boss.

Just like the project I was handed, when I wasn’t really qualified to do it, and doing it meant that I had to ignore the rest of my job.

Others signs of workplace bullying:

You are constantly feeling agitated and anxious, experiencing a sense of doom, waiting for bad things to happen

No matter what you do, you are never left alone to do your job without interference

People feel justified screaming or yelling at you in front of others, but you are punished if you scream back

You are shocked when accused of incompetence, despite a history of objective excellence, typically by someone who cannot do your job

Everyone — co-workers, senior bosses, HR — agrees (in person and orally) that your tormentor is a jerk, but there is nothing they will do about it

I mean. Honestly. How did I not see that coming?

“Targets are more technically skilled than their bullies. They are the “go-to” veteran workers to whom new employees turn for guidance. Insecure bosses and co-workers can’t stand to share credit for the recognition of talent. Bully bosses steal credit from skilled targets.”

The Beast took credit for the increased social media traffic while denying that it had happened under my tenure. She told flat out lies about her involvement in my daily work, and she lied about my contributions.

“Targets are better liked, they have more social skills, and quite likely possess greater emotional intelligence. They have empathy (even for their bullies). Colleagues, customers, and management (with exception to the bullies and their sponsors) appreciate the warmth that the targets bring to the workplace.”

I was liked immediately. I even had empathy, right up until they lost their minds at me. I once offered to help out on a busy project, all the way up to fetching coffee. And you know what else? When it came to what I was doing, the writing, the learning, the posting… I was only getting better every day.

I was bullied.

My reaction was textbook. I was anxious. I cried. I just didn’t want to go to work. But I never thought about it in those terms. Because I’m not 16. I’m 39. I’m a 39-year-old woman who let a Beast and her toadies bully me right out of a perfectly good job that I was good at, and burn a bridge so far to the ground that the mythical phoenix itself ain’t ever rising out of that shit.

There were good things. My immediate supervisor was a good ear, and I found, hidden among the assholes, the uncool kids, a group of women who can’t seem to get on the Beast’s good side no matter what they do. They’re stuck, for one reason or another. And they’re being bullied.

I guess I figured that the whole bully thing was a good 25 years behind me, and that at this point in life, knowing who I am and how I am, I don’t seem — the type — to be bullied. But damn, y’all. People are dicks.

Now, for obvious reasons, I’m not going to actually SAY the name of my former employer. And for those of you who know it, how about you do me a favor and not get me sued, okay? It’s not really about them anyway. It’s about this nonsense. These assholes who wander the world as perfectly grown people who still decide to crap all over other people.

I didn’t really know it existed past a certain point in life. I can’t even pinpoint what triggered it, just that once it started, there was no stopping it. They were going to break me.

When I quit, the woman who had sent me the final e-mails replied, “Good. We need to get rid of dead weight.”

I don’t think she even knew my name.

I worked in news where I wrote stories about drug addicts who had stolen from their loved ones, and drunk drivers who had run over innocent people in the road. I’ve met men and women so petty that they’ll spend every last dime suing their former employers or their city leaders just to mess with them. I’ve been yelled at by strangers for standing in the wrong place. And once, when I lived in New Orleans, a complete stranger pushed me, with both hands, because I was in the way of where he wanted to walk.

I’ve always known people could be cold.

But I never realized they could be this openly, enthusiastically ugly.

So there was this story going around on the facepage about some things that Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries said about the acceptable clientele of his over-priced trendy mall retail store. Mr. Jeffries, frankly, doesn’t want to see the fatties and uglies inside his store best known for near-naked models and one really annoying 90’s pop song.

“We go after the cool kids,” Jeffries told Salon. “We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

The article passed around on the facepage, which appeared on Elite Daily (and also ends suddenly and hilariously) explained further, but to break it down, basically, Mr. Jeffries said that Abercrombie & Fitch has a target audience, and that audience is skinny. And really, that was the jist of it. Mr. Jeffries associates skinny with young and pretty, so therefore if you are skinny, you belong in his trendy clothes. He wants people with washboard abs in his clothes. He never wants people in his clothes who do NOT have washboard abs as the people with washboard abs will apparently not want to be seen in the same clothing.

Side note – if I had washboard abs, I would NOT wear Abercrombie & Fitch. I’d wear a bra everywhere. So people could SEE MY WASHBOARD ABS. Sheesh.

Abercrombie & Fitch does not bother making bigger women’s sizes (though, they do for men, because male athletes are also super cool and worthy of wearing their line).

I gotta be honest. I had no idea. And mostly, I don’t really care. I don’t bother walking into Abercrombie & Fitch because the clothes on display in the windows are not at all my style, and seem overpriced, and it never occurred to me to walk inside and take a peek. I know I am dating myself, but to me, Abercrombie & Fitch kind of screams, “HEY! Are you the next preppy murderer?! Then you should dress yourself here!” I certainly don’t assume that the people who DO shop there are all in the “I hate uglies” club (or, for that matter, preppy murderers). Truth is, I love me some Walmart, and plenty of people write articles about the horrors of mean and terrible Walmart, and if I tried to care, I would fail, because I don’t.

So the CEO of this place is anti-overweight. Meh. Whatever.

But I do take issue with his assertion that the reason he markets to the skinnies is because they are all beautiful. It seems to imply that the fatties are all ugly. And I mean, come on now. Really? Really dude who looks like this:

Dude. You’re almost 70. And you are not fully fatty. But um, your neck rolls are not exactly screaming “young hot sexy.” I’m just sayin’.

The truth of it is, beauty is subjective. There is no description of beautiful. So when Mr. Jeffries states one, I think even HE knows that there is no possible way for it to be effective or accurate. He is practically 70, so he is clearly old enough to know there are ugly skinny people in the world, be it because they are physically unattractive or just their personalities are offensive to general humankind. I know he gets it. So heck, maybe he was just making sure to say some wacko stuff to make sure that his brand remains relevant. After all, Abercrombie & Fitch appeared to struggle in 2012, with weak sales and plans to start shutting stores. So hey, say something CRAY-CRAY (see what I did there?) and they will come, even to protest, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

I have no idea what was so random, I was stuck on the word “totes.” What the hell does this mean? So I decided I would use my highly trained investigative journalist mind to unravel this mystery.

I googled it.

Totes, it seems, is shortened speak for the word “totally.” As in, the English language is being totes destroyed by the totes laziness of this totes embarrassing usage of the word totes.

This desperate need to shorten and clip words blows my mind. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I didn’t spend hours at St. James diagramming sentences just so that I could LOL and WTF at them later. Incidentally, how in the hell did LOL come to use anyway? I realize it is the shortened way to say “laugh out loud,” but back in my 7th grade note-writing days, we did that by writing “ha” which is actually shorter. What genius came up with LOL? And then took it a step further to ROFLMAO. Has anyone ever rolled on the floor laughing, or laughed their ass off? Couldn’t the same effect be achieved if you simply wrote, HA HA!

Now it appears WTF has been replaced by WTAF, which adds the word “actual” in it (which also makes my friend Lara irrationally ragey — also not a word but I like that one). But it appears that WTAF is just the modern version of “huh” which is also a letter shorter. Don’t even get me started on how www is the shortened version of world wide web, but when you SAY www, you are saying six additional syllables than if you had just gone ahead and said “world wide web.”

Anyway, I felt the need to get to the bottom of this totes ridiculous phenomenon. Turns out I am saying that wrong, too. Because it is not totes ridiculous. It’s totes ridic. It’s cray-cray. Ima say it prolly so cray-cray it for realz could turn my brain to mush. Which would be the exact opposite of totes adorbs. If that happened — FML. Obvi, I’m jelly of ppl who can avoid this sitch.

(somewhere there is someone who understood all that)

This makes me sad. It makes me so sad. I wonder if this is what Shakespeare would think if we plopped him down in front of an episode of any television show ever made. WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE SAYING? I want to say that this is just the evolution of like, grody to the max and gag me with a spoon, but NO. Because that was fun. And also, words. Full on words. “Gag me with a spoon” is extremely descriptive, you know EXACTLY what I am saying.

Naturally (natch?) I decided this matter needed immediate attention from my husband. It took a fairly long, somewhat slow conversation in order to explain to him what is happening here, what people are saying, how to understand it. The result? The next day, Jim sent me a text in the morning. “Are you awake?” “Yes,” I replied.

“I totes knew you were.”

And it has begun.

These words that are making us crazy, we’ve now spent so much time ripping on them, they are becoming part of our daily conversations. We’re officially cray-cray on the reggae (I have no idea what that means).

Case in point — dinner. There we were, sitting at family dinner (we have family values) and Jim and I were discussing something. I can officially say I have no idea what we were talking about. But the words “totes” and “ridic” were fluid. I def don’t know what was said. It’s possible he said he had to go to the libes (that one came from a friend of mine). We spoke of our besties and Christmas prezzies and the deets on what we had for breks.

Hank was watching us, slowing putting his food to his mouth (and missing half of it — for hell’s sake, he’s 10, when is he going to learn to eat without half the food falling onto his shirt?), watching us back and forth like the world’s slowest ping-pong match. He finally cleared his throat and said, “uh, why are you two talking like teenagers?”

I don’t know, kid. It’s like a virus. A ridic, awk, presh, gorg, cray-cray, and bee-tee-dubs adorbs virus. Whatevs. I need a vacay.